All big companies are larger than "some tribalism number". All big companies eventually devolve into fighting tribes. Forcing procedures to make other departm

All big companies are larger than "some tribalism number". All big companies eventually devolve into fighting tribes. Forcing procedures to make other departments look bad, automating or faking results to make our department look good, etc. Obviously that's BS work which contributes nothing to society. Meanwhile on the other side I've worked for companies as small as three people where we were basically a team of equal contractors with no management required (non-IT outsourced labor, more or less, long story) I would wager that only a very small number of people in between in size provide any value that couldn't be replaced by say, a mailing list and a small shell script or two. I've worked for some good managers. Of course half were below the median by definition and they mostly produced BS work. The grad student analogy is inaccurate, that's more of a mentorship or apprenticeship model.